


Heathcliff in Hell

by phoenixchild



Category: Dante - Fandom, Wuthering Heights
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Hell, Other, Reincarnation, dante's inferno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-17 08:06:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1380163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixchild/pseuds/phoenixchild





	Heathcliff in Hell

‘But where does she sleep, out on those cold marshes, where does she lay her little head? Do ghosts rest? And if so why does she not rest here with me? For after all these years she would surely find some way to forgive me my sins, my anger, my absences?’ 

Sleep has not found Heathcliff’s eyelids since Cathy’s death. No, it was before then. Since he first realised the things his adolescent body wanted to do with hers, perhaps? Since he first saw her? Did he ever know what sleep was?  
He has become much like a ghost himself, though life still scratches its fingernails into the precipice of his flesh, maliciously refusing to let go and let him fall into the abyss. He has tried to pry those fingernails away, but he does not think he has even the will to try harder anymore.  
Lingering life is his sixth circle, because whoever guided his wretched soul here did not tell him he was already dead; he did not deserve that privilege.  
In the sixth circle, in the first ring, Heathcliff lingers like an icy draft in the rooms of the manor house, filling its neglected rooms with the sound of his anguish, transposed into Cathy’s name: prayers to Cathy, pleas to Cathy, Cathy, Cathy, Cathy. She cannot be there to warm the halls in life and body, but her name settles in the dust. He coats his body with the name-infused stuff like a blanket.  
There is no divide between the days and nights to mark the passage of time in Hell. It could be argued that time does not exist in Hell. If it did, perhaps Heathcliff might one day forget that the name Cathy has any meaning at all. Perhaps he has, but is still doomed to repeat it forever, remembering only that he experiences agony. If he was aware that he was dead, I do not think he would even know why he was here. His sins, his murders, are fleeting, inconsequential moments in comparison to his obsession with this Cathy. This is why I took pity on him. There are many souls I must watch being punished, and a great many I feel pity for. Even more so, a great many who interest me. If given a choice, I would grant them another life, if only for the joy of watching it play out. Hell is my punishment too. Few know this. You think I delight in punishing humankind? I am not the gargantuan beast made of fire, who tears human flesh from limb, from bloody bone and muscle. I am being punished like the rest of you.  
That is another story. Another time.  
I took pity on Heathcliff. I took pity on him because he was one of the few souls in Hell who was not driven mad by reliving the guilt of their passports to damnation. He was driven mad by love. Utter what sickened utterances you have to utter; you humans are junkies for love, you can’t deny it. You’ve turned it into an industry for selling entertainment, that’s how addicted you are. I’m just like you. And so, I was seduced and moved by the tragedy of this man’s obsession.  
I make the decision to defy the constraints of my own sentence, though it is written in the scarred words of God on my own flesh, over and over and over.  
I wipe Heathcliff’s mind clean, peeling layers of dust and memory back until his soul is as clean and small as a baby’s, until he is a fetus. Until he is a cell.


End file.
